DEPARTMENT OF ARCHAEOLOGY RESEARCH SEMINAR
PROGRAMME, 2011 - 2012
This year, we have asked speakers to provide an abstract of their seminar talk; you
can find these at the end of the programme.
Unless otherwise indicated, all research seminars will take place in the Birley Room,
Dawson Building, on Wednesday afternoons starting at 4.15pm and finishing cca.
6pm. Colleagues wishing to join the speaker for dinner in town after drinks in the
Dawson Common Room are encouraged to contact John Chapman
(j.c.chapman@dur.ac.uk) at least two days before the seminar is held.
5/X/2011:
Dr. Randall McGuire (SUNY - Binghampton)
“Setting Things Right: the Massacre in the Sierra Mazatan and Indigenous
Archaeology in Sonora, México”
2/XI/2011:
Professor Gabriel Cooney (University College Dublin)
"Axes from islands: the role of stone axeheads from insular sources in the Neolithic
of Ireland and Britain"
9/XI/2011:
Professor Frank Vermeulen (University of Ghent)
“Geoarchaeological approaches to the study of abandoned Roman cities and their
hinterland in Adriatic Italy”
16/XI/2011:
23/XI/2011:
Professor Matthew Collins (University of York)
“ZooMS; protein mass-spectrometry for the masses”
30/XI/2011:
Professor Robert Van-der-Noort (University of Exeter)
“Climate-change archaeology of the sea”
7/XII/2011
Dr. Nicky Milner (University of York)
“The Meso-what?: Public outreach for the Mesolithic and Star Carr”
14/XII/2011
The Northton Team: Mike Church, Rosie Bishop, Claire Nesbitt, Emily Blake,
Steph Piper, Angela Perri, Peter Rowley-Conwy
“The Discovery of the Mesolithic of the Outer Hebrides”
CHRISTMAS VACATION
25/I/2012:
Dr. Cyprian Broodbank (UCL – Institute of Archaeology)
" The Making of the Middle Sea: Towards a Prehistory of the Mediterranean"
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1/II/2012:
Professor Chris Gerrard (University of Durham)
“Contest and cooperation: strategies for medieval and later irrigation in an arid zone
in NE Spain”
8/II/2012:
Dr. Peter van Dommelen (University of Glasgow)
“Rural Connections: Migration, Technology and Agrarian Production in the
Classical Mediterranean”
15/II/2012:
Dr. Bruce Albert (Durham University Depts. of Archaeology & Geography)
“Old and New World Perspectives on Human Ecology as Examined from Alluvial
Pollen Data”
22/II/2012:
Dr. Steffen Terp Laursen (University of Aarhus)
“The world’s largest prehistoric mound cemeteries and the emergence of the Dilmun
state on Bahrain, c. 2250-1750 BC”
29/II/2012:
Professor Elizabeth Edwards (De Montfort University)
“Amateur Photographers and the Experience of Antiquities in the late nineteenth
century”
7/III/2012:
Dr. Ulf-Dietrich Schoop (University of Edinburgh)
“The archaeology of villages in prehistoric Anatolia. Excavations at Late
Chalcolithic Çamlıbel Tarlası, near Boğazköy”
14/III/2012:
Professor Greg Woolf (University of St. Andrews)
“Time, Monuments and Festivals in Ancient Rome”
EASTER VACATION
25/IV/2012:
Professor Richard Hingley (Durham University Department of Archaeology )
“Hadrian's Wall: A life”
2/V/2012:
Dr. Ian Meighan (University of Belfast)
“Geoarchaeology in Ireland: New Grange to Rathlin Island”
9/V/2012:
Professor Tim Darvill (Bournemouth University)
“”
“Merlin’s Magic Circles: Stonehenge and the use of the Preseli Bluestones”
SEMINAR ABSTRACTS
Bruce Albert: “Old and New World Perspectives on Human Ecology as Examined from
Alluvial Pollen Data”
New methods of alluvial pollen analysis, based on published data, are used to define ecological
parameters of human settlement in Central Europe and South-Central North America. Parameters
examined include early farming impacts on environment since the Bronze Age in lowland Bohemia,
the forest ecology and sylviculture of food collectors in East Texas since the Middle Holocene, the
ecological setting of Early Holocene hunter-gatherer complexity in South Texas, and limits of
human influence on desert formation in North Mexico.
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Cyprian Broodbank: “The Making of the Middle Sea: Towards a Prehistory of the
Mediterranean”
The Mediterranean comprises the world’s largest inland sea, the greatest extent of a rare,
challenging environment on the planet, and its societies and culture have had an impact on global
history immensely greater than the basin’s size would predict. Their characteristics have been well
explored by Classical, Roman and later historians. But almost all the fundamental elements (e.g.
seafaring, trade networks, cultivation and consumption practices, ideologies and urbanism), in fact
emerged and coalesced far earlier, during the region’s long, exceptionally vibrant prehistory. This
invites large-scale archaeological investigation across a broad canvas, from the end of the Ice Age
to the start of the Iron Age, by which time the making of this middle sea was complete.
Matthew Collins: “ZooMS: protein mass-spectrometry for the masses”
Archaeologists and conservation scientists are often encouraged to test their samples using new
techniques developed by analysts in laboratories far, far away. In many cases, these methods prove
both costly and destructive, yet yield little information of relevance to archaeology. The vision
behind BioArCh was to avoid this by putting the scientists where it matters into
the archaeology department and designing the analytical methods to match real world needs. I will
discuss how ZooMS has developed in unusual directions as a result of the close interaction between
scientists and field archaeologists from the original vision as a phylogenetic tool into a low cost
identification/dating/screening system and illustrate some of the applications used by our MSc
students over the summer.
Gabriel Cooney: “Axes from islands: the role of stone axeheads from insular sources in the
Neolithic of Ireland and Britain”
A notable feature of the Neolithic (4000-2500 BC) of northwest Europe is the exploitation of lithic
sources on islands for the production of stone axeheads and other artifacts. The presentation will
discuss the significance of island stone quarries and the distribution of axeheads from these sources
as an aspect of the introduction of farming and the development of Neolithic societies in the Irish
Sea Zone and North Atlantic. Key issues that will be addressed include the date at which organized
quarrying commenced, production processes and the spatial location of different stages of
production. These quarry and production issues will be linked to the examination of the extent and
character of the distribution of axeheads from the sources and the social networks involved. There
will be a particular focus on the islands of Lambay (source: porphyry), off the east coast of Ireland,
Rathlin (source: porcellanite), off the north coast of Ireland and the Shetland islands, the
northernmost part of Britain (source: felsite).
Tim Darvill: “Merlin’s Magic Circles: Stonehenge and the use of the Preseli Bluestones”
Stonehenge in central southern England is known the world over as an iconic symbol of Europe’s
prehistoric past. Here it is suggested that while Stonehenge’s origins as a ceremonial monument
were conventional enough its later history was exceptional. Key to the transformation was the
arrival of about 80 pillars of Bluestone rock brought a distance of around 250km from the Preseli
Hills of southwest Wales to Salisbury Plain. But why were these stones important? And what did
they mean to Neolithic people? Using archaeological evidence from Stonehenge itself and from
recent work in the Preseli Hills, and folklore and oral tradition dating back to the 13th century AD,
a new picture of Stonehenge is emerging in which the stones themselves can be seen to have
perceived magical properties connected with healing. Their re-use in later and ever more elaborate
structures at Stonehenge show something of their power and significance and illustrate how the
landscape of the Preseli Hills is constructed in microcosm at Stonehenge. People were attracted to
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the area from continental Europe, and what started out as a local focus became a celebrated place
for prehistoric pilgrimage.
Elizabeth Edwards: “Amateur Photographers and the Experience of Antiquities in the late
nineteenth century”
In this paper, I consider ways in which the relationship between photography and historical
imagination was figured through the embodied experience of the photographer, moving through the
landscape, with a heightened awareness of historical and archaeological topography, and translating
this into photographs. I shall do so through an examination of the practices of amateur
photographers in England around 1900, whose efforts to record landscapes of the past were
articulated through competing rhetorics of subjective experience and objective observation, and
thus competing claims of the historical and archaeological imagination. I shall argue that the
historical landscape was defined, and the photographs shaped, not through a disembodied gaze, but
through experiences of light, wind, space and, above all, the historical imagination of ‘being there’.
Chris Gerrard: “Contest and cooperation: strategies for medieval and later irrigation in an
arid zone in NE Spain”
For the medieval period in Spain, water capture, storage and distribution can be explored through
archaeological fieldwork and historical documents. The range of hydraulic technology, still largely
unmapped by archaeologists, includes qanats, adits, diversion dams, and irrigation channels. As we
shall see, water allocation was prone to create tensions between communities especially after the
Christian reconquest in the early 12th century when new religious houses introduced destabilising
forces of change. These tensions persisted for many centuries and led to some surprising decisions
by irrigators.
Richard Hingley: “Hadrian's Wall: A life”
This paper, which arises from the ‘Tales of the Frontier’ project, assesses the after-life of the Wall
(see http://www.dur.ac.uk/roman.centre/hadrianswall/publications/rhbook/) from the fifth century to
the internet. It explores the idea of the Wall as a living landscape that is constantly remade in
conceptual and physical terms. In particular, it addresses the development of popular and scholarly
knowledge and how the 'archaeological imagination' can help to transform inherited ideas about the
monumentality of the Wall. It forms part of a series of talks and events in Durham, co-ordinated
through the Institute for Advanced Studies, under the 'Life of the Frontier' theme (see
http://www.dur.ac.uk/ias/lifeofthefrontier/).
Steffen Laursen: “The world’s largest prehistoric mound cemeteries and the emergence of the
Dilmun state on Bahrain, c. 2250-1750 BC”
The archaeological evidence emerging from the island of Bahrain is gradually revealing the
fascinating story of the Bronze Age state of Dilmun. The land of Dilmun played an important role in
Sumerian commerce and mythology and around 2050 BC a “Dilmun kingdom” appeared on
Bahrain. The mapping of 75,000 burial mounds from the small island has made it possible to trace
the genesis of Dilmun’s royal dynasty from its tribal roots to full-blown statehood and collapse.
This lecture will present new evidence, derived from aerial photographs, from this fascinating lost
world - including temples, trade colonies, royal tombs and fortified settlements.
Randall McGuire: “Setting Things Right: the Massacre in the Sierra Mazatan and
Indigenous Archaeology in Sonora, México”
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In 1902, a party of Yaqui warriors freed hundreds of enslaved Yaquis from haciendas near
Hermosillo, Sonora, México. They defeated a Mexican army column and sought refuge in the
rugged Sierra Mazatan. On the night of June 7th, Mexican troops outflanked the Yaqui warriors.
The next morning they attacked the camp of women and children killing 124 Yaqui. Three weeks
later, the North American physical anthropologist Ales Hrdlicka collected the skulls of 10
individuals, human bone, hats, blankets, weapons, and a cradleboard from the battlefield. He
shipped these materials to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. The binational Proyecto Cerro Mazatan project worked collaboratively with the Yaqui tribes of Sonora
and Arizona to repatriate the human remains and other materials that Hrdlicka took from the
battlefield. The collaboration was a success and in the fall of 2009 the National Museum of
American History returned the remains to the Yaqui People. This project is a valuable example of
how Indigenous Archaeology can set things right and atone for anthropology’s past transgressions.
Ian Meighan: “Geoarchaeology in Ireland: New Grange to Rathlin Island”
-Sourcing the lithic materials of the Newgrange and Knowth Passage Tombs: granite cobbles from
the north/ metabasic rocks from Co. Tyrone ( petrography), quartz from the south ( oxygen isotopes/
fluid inclusions), granite basin stones ( portable XRF spectrometry).
-Sourcing the granite millstones of the world's oldest tidal mill ( Nendrum, Co. Down) : trace
elements and Sr, Nd isotopes.
-Ballynoe Stone Circle, Co. Down: a geological miscellany.
-Porcellanite: Tievebulligh and Rathlin Island: Source discrimination of Neolithic axe-heads using
Sr (ppm) and Sr isotope ratios.
Nicky Milner: “The Meso-what?: Public outreach for the Mesolithic and Star Carr”
One of the frustrations about working on the Mesolithic period is that very few people have even
heard of it. This paper intends to cover some of the wider issues of presenting the Mesolithic to the
public and assessing what is available in terms of popular media. It will then expand upon some of
the ways in which information has been disseminated about Star Carr and the attempts to assess the
impact of the work to date. Although the paper is intended to be fairly light-hearted, it is hoped that
it might generate a lot of discussion and thoughts of how to engage the public further in future
work.
The Northton Team: Mike Church, Rosie Bishop, Claire Nesbitt, Emily Blake, Steph Piper,
Angela Perri, Peter Rowley-Conwy
“The Discovery of the Mesolithic of the Outer
Hebrides”
Northton (on Harris) is the first Mesolithic site to have been discovered in the Outer Hebrides,
recognised by Mike Church a few years ago. The site has been dated to 7000-6500 cal BC. The
team has excavated part of this site, and we present preliminary results of some of the main aspects:
subsistence was based on fish and marine resources, and some stone raw materials were imported
from far afield. Subsequently, a second Mesolithic site has been found and sampled, Tràigh na
Beirigh on Lewis, dating from c. 4300 cal BC. In 2011 a third probable Mesolithic site was found at
Temple Bay on Harris. We will discuss preliminary results from these, and show how they fit into
the Scottish Mesolithic as a whole.
Ulf-Dietrich Schoop: “The archaeology of villages in prehistoric Anatolia. Excavations at
Late Chalcolithic Çamlıbel Tarlası, near Boğazköy”
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Archaeological research in Anatolia is traditionally focused on the exploration of large settlement
mounds. Recent excavations at 4th millennium BC Çamlıbel Tarlası, situated in the mountains of
north-central Anatolia, show that small village sites may display a surprisingly rich picture of past
activities. Çamlıbel Tarlası has produced new and unexpected information concerning metallurgical
and other pyrotechnical practices and ritual behaviour. Part of this evidence is unlikely to be
represented at larger sites. One of the emerging possibilities is that Çamlıbel Tarlası may actually be
quite typical for a yet undiscovered settlement pattern in the region. Small hamlet sites may even
have represented the only settlement mode for certain time periods which have therefore remained
below the “archaeological radar.”
Robert Van-der-Noort: “Climate-change archaeology of the sea”
Global climate change is one of the most important issues faced by humanity in the 21st century.
Archaeology, despite its long-standing interest in the way societies have adapted to (natural) climate
change in the past, has not had a significant role in climate change science or climate change
debates. This paper sets out a different way in which archaeological research can contribute to these
debates: it seeks to explore the archaeological study of the sea as a way in which coastal
communities can strengthen their resilience in a time of climate changed-driven sea-level change.
Peter Van Dommelen: “Rural Connections: Migration, Technology and Agrarian Production
in the Classical Mediterranean“
Migration is a topic with a long standing in Archaeology but also one that has received much less
attention in recent decades. In the wake of the renewed interest in connectivity in Mediterranean
Archaeology and thanks to new scientific evidence, migration is now back on the agenda.
In this paper, I shall explore the role of migration and overseas connections between peasant
communities in the western Mediterranean of the Classical-Hellenistic period. I intend to examine
in particular the technology of wine production and its social implications, drawing on recent
excavations and survey evidence in Sardinia, Sicily and eastern Iberia.
Frank Vermeulen: “Geoarchaeological approaches to the study of abandoned Roman cities
and their hinterland in Adriatic Italy”
In this presentation, I wish to highlight the huge potential of integrated survey by teams of
archaeologists and geographers/geologists for studying the ancient landscape in a diachronic way. A
set of considerations will be based on the experience in the Potenza Valley Survey, a long-term
research project by Ghent University on settlement and landscape change in a valley between the
Central-Italian Apennines and the Adriatic Sea. The intensive surveys conducted on 4 abandoned
Roman towns and their suburban areas will be discussed in particular, in connection with themes
such as the impact of early urbanization on settlement location and landscape use.
Greg Woolf: “Time, Monuments and Festivals in Ancient Rome”
This paper is an investigation into the rationale for the construction of monumental venues such as
theatres, amphitheatres, circuses and stadia, beginning from the observation that they correlate
poorly in time or in space with the incidence of the festival culture they accommodated. Most
discussions start from the claim that the creation of permanent festival spaces is to be explained by
the shift from political pluralism to monarchy at the end of the Republic. This claim can be falsified
on Roman evidence, and appears especially implausible when a wider geographical context is
considered. Ethnography and prehistory alike suggest that festivals operate with one sense of time,
focused on contemporaneity, while monuments fashion links between the deep past and remote
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posterity. Using this distinction, this paper argues for some different kinds of explanation for the
creation of some of the most characteristic structures of the early imperial period.
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